


little love notes

by hashire



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, M/M, Multi, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-10-31 01:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10888947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hashire/pseuds/hashire
Summary: He can’t seem to even imagine why his best friend since childhood gave his locker combination to his boyfriend of a few months so he could leave love notes in Yuri's locker. It doesn't make sense.





	little love notes

JJ can be stupidly charming when he’s not the most obnoxious person in the world and the bane of Yuri’s existence. Not that Yuri would ever admit to the former.

It doesn’t stop him from crumpling up and tossing the little love notes that somehow keep making their way into his locker. If JJ is nearby, they often get chucked at his head.

JJ just laughs and winks at him, or blows a kiss and grins, or shrugs and throws his arm around Otabek’s shoulders if he happens to walk by at the moment. Then Yuri’s stomach will lurch or his heart will pound or something equally as dumb at the sight.

He seethes the morning he opens his locker and finds a rose inside, nestled in rumpled pink tissue paper. He leaves it there, as is, after he pulls a few books out, and doesn’t go back to his locker for the entire day.

He wants to tell Otabek about it when they see each other at lunch, but the words get bunched up in his throat and he has to chug water to be able to even speak.  _What the fuck is your boyfriend trying to pull with this bullshit?_  is what he comes up with. He can’t ask that. 

Instead, he finds JJ by his locker after school, presumably texting Otabek based on the huge, dreamy smile on his face. 

Yuri pulls open his locker, slaps the phone out of JJ’s hand (“ _Hey! What the fuck?!”_ ), and shoves the rose, thorns all bared, into JJ’s palms. 

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” Yuri says in a low voice, “but can you stop breaking into my locker every morning and putting all of this stupid shit in there?”

JJ whines and extracts the few thorns that caught his skin before reaching down to pick up his phone (miraculously intact thanks to the probably ungodly expensive case). “But, kitten, I’m not –” 

“ _Don’t call me that_   _you_ –”

“I’m not breaking into your locker,” he finishes. The smile is back despite the blood on his palm. 

“Sure, whatever,” Yuri says, rolling his eyes. “I’m going to tell Otabek about this now. It’s gone on too long.” 

To his surprise, JJ laughs. “Yuri, my darling, how do you think I got your locker combination?” 

-

Otabek doesn’t text him that night. It’s unusual.

When Yuri left, he almost slammed the locker on JJ’s hands when he held out the rose to him. He’d heard the footsteps behind him and walked off without looking back.

Yuri spends too much time trying to compose a text to his best friend, attempting to properly convey his confusion and desire to know why Otabek did this. It all ends up being shades of one simple phrase:  _what the fuck._

 _What the fuck, Beka_  is what he ends up sending before shutting off his phone. He wants to know the answer. He really does. But he has a feeling it’ll keep him up all night, just _knowing_. He wants to sleep and not spend the entire next day feeling sick from not sleeping enough.   
  
He tosses and turns most of the night anyway, awake and unable to settle, thinking about what the answer might be. He throws his phone across the room more than once, dragging himself up to check it for cracks every single time and bringing it back to his bed. He resolutely does not turn it back on.

Even with all the time awake, he can’t seem to even imagine why his best friend since childhood gave his locker combination to his boyfriend of a few months so he could leave love notes in Yuri's locker. It doesn't make sense.  
  
But, then again, things stopped making sense when the new kid from Canada swept in midway through the year and seduced Beka with an obnoxiously impressive flourish. Part of Yuri was (and is) mad about it.  

He wakes up the next morning to his grandfather yelling that he’s going to be late for school if he doesn’t get up. Yuri snatches up his phone and glares at it, his sleep-deprived recently-awoken mind conveniently forgetting that he’d turned it off on purpose the night before.

His stomach churns when he remembers why it’s off.

He’s late enough getting up that his grandfather has to drive him to school. That means he misses walking with Otabek (since they live so nearby), which he already missed doing yesterday because he left in a huff. 

Yuri regrets so many of his life choices in those minutes in his grandpa’s old clunker. He wants to throw his phone again when it finally turns on and finds it almost dead anyway. He also wishes he had never sent that damn message because Otabek hadn’t even bothered to _respond, that asshole._

He trips on his way into school and skins his palms.

 _Fuck my life_ , he thinks, wrenching open his locker.

There’s another note waiting for him, folded in fourths and sitting atop his notebooks. He considers ripping it up and just walking straight out of school. His grandpa would be so disappointed if he did that, though, so he snatches the note, stuffs it into his pocket, and dashes off to his first class.

He itches to open it but he feels like it would just make his day even worse. Instead, he picks at the scabs that form on his palm, doodles in the margins of his notebook, and almost dozes off in every class before lunch.

He only dares to pull it out of his pocket and flick it open five minutes before his last morning class is due to end.

 _I’m sorry,_ it says in familiar handwriting. It’s not JJ’s. _It was my idea. I should have told you sooner_.

His heart pounds as he crumples it up noisily, earning him a glare from his teacher. He bolts out the door before she can say anything, just as the bell rings. He finds Otabek without any trouble, walks up to him, and hurls the note right at his head. It bounces off his temple. Otabek scrambles to catch it. 

“Yura,” he starts, “what –”

“ _You asshole_ ,” Yuri says with as much feeling as he can muster. He then turns around and leaves.

-

“You can stop toying with my emotions.” Yuri is sitting on the rocks behind the school. He doesn’t see and barely hears JJ walking up, but he knows he’s there. That asshole has a presence about him that makes him impossible to ignore.

There’s a short laugh behind him, and he hates it so, so much. Of course JJ would laugh at him. He kind of feels like punching him in the face (more than usual, at least).

There’s an arm around his shoulders before he knows what’s happening. “Kitten,” JJ says, leaning against him, “we –”

“Don’t call me that!” He shoves the arm off him and almost drops his lunch. He narrows his eyes at JJ, who holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“We weren’t trying to do that.” JJ sits down next to him. Yuri makes a big show of scooting down so they’re no longer close. JJ runs a hand through his hair.

“Then what were you trying to do? Make fun of me? I’ll kick your ass.” JJ might have a few inches on him and more muscle, but Yuri knows he could do it. Even so, the threat comes out weak and tired:  as tired as Yuri is right now.

Hearing that you’ve been jerked around by your best friend is kind of shattering. 

JJ looks alarmed by the suggestion and hastens to say, “No! Of course not. Beka would never do that to you.”

“That’s what I _used_ to think.” He packs up his lunch and prepares to leave. Going home to bed would not resolve anything, but it’ll be worth it. Probably. 

JJ grabs his arm before he can even get up. He’s prepared to throw it off, but JJ looks surprisingly serious and intensely earnest. “Just stay and listen, will you?”

“Why should I?” He doesn’t pull his arm from JJ’s grip yet. It’s firm and warm through the material of his jacket. JJ loosens his hold but doesn’t let him go.

“He likes you a lot, you know. I think he likes you more than he likes me.”

Yuri’s heart beats a little faster at that, but he forces himself to roll his eyes. “Of course he likes me. He’s been my best friend for years.”

JJ flashes him a grin. “You know what I mean, kitten.” Yuri shoves him. “I like you too, you know.” He winks. “I wouldn’t write you poetry if I didn’t.”

“Poetry? You call _that_ poetry?”

“It’s my best work!” He puts his hand over his heart and tosses his head back when the wind blows his hair into his face.

JJ’s fingers still encircle his arm, and he squeezes it. When he moves into Yuri’s space, Yuri stays put.

"Now that that’s out in the open, _finally_ , how ‘bout it? Can I?"

Yuri tilts his head to the side in a noncommittal manner. JJ leans forward anyway, eyes sparkling as he smirks.

Yuri turns away at the last moment so JJ kisses his cheek. He pulls back and laughs. "I expected that."

“Then why’d you bother?” He tries to snap and look annoyed, but his cheeks are pink and not from the wind.

“Because…it’s JJ style!” Yuri shoves him off the rocks before he can make the stupid sign with his hands. JJ laughs even as he lands hard on his elbows.

“I’m going back in,” Yuri announces, stalking away without another word. JJ’s laughter follows him, even as he hears him pick himself up off the ground.

-

Yuri doesn’t want to face Otabek, despite what JJ said. It’s all so sudden and he can barely process it while trying to stay awake in class. He skips his last period to rush home and crawl into bed.

His grandfather leaves him alone. He forgets to plug in his phone and wakes up the next day (Saturday) to a still-dead phone.

Once it charges up enough to turn on, he’s met with a text from Otabek. The timestamp says it was sent late last night, and there’s only one.

 _Let’s talk_.

 _OK_ is what he sends back after going back and forth about what to say. He receives a time and a destination (Otabek’s house, of course) before he tosses the phone on his bed and goes to eat breakfast.

-

Otabek is sitting on his front porch, staring at his phone when Yuri walks up.

“Hey,” Yuri says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. Otabek stands to meet him.

“Hey.” They look at each other. A long moment passes between them. Otabek opens his mouth. Yuri beats him to it. “Why didn’t you just _say_ something sooner?”

Otabek closes his mouth, frowning a bit as he thinks. “I…wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want to mess everything up.” 

Yuri finds himself rolling his eyes. “That’s a terrible reason.”

“Why didn’t _you_ say something?” Otabek says this without much accusation, but it’s still there. Yuri shifts his weight from one leg to the other.

“Uh, maybe…for the same reason?” Otabek huffs out a laugh. Yuri scowls. “Why did you do it now?”

Otabek shifts his weight, too, glancing off into the distance. “It was JJ who convinced me that things were mutual. ‘It’s so obvious to everyone but the two of you.’” Yuri’s scowl remains. “He’s more perceptive than you think.” 

“Maybe.” Yuri turns his attention to his shoes, tipping his feet outward so he’s balancing on the sides of them. “Why the notes?”

Otabek looks at his own feet. “It’s something I was thinking of doing at some point, I guess, but never really got around to doing it. When I told JJ about it when we were talking about you, he said he could do it for me.”

“He told me that he’s been writing me _poetry_ the whole time. Please don’t tell me that it’s your writing. It’s terrible.” Otabek laughs at that.

“No, it’s all him. He’s more creative than I am.” He takes a breath. “He’s a good guy,” Otabek says. “Definitely able to get under your skin, but in a good way.” He scrunches his nose the moment after the words come out and adds, “That came out wrong.”

Yuri stares and then starts to laugh and laugh. This is not the way he expected things to resolve, but he’s not complaining. Not anymore. A giddy feeling wells up inside of Yuri’s stomach, weird and new and refreshing after all of the frustration he’s felt for the recent days…weeks…maybe months.

It’s so dumb.

"What now?" he asks, fiddling with his zipper. He might not be complaining, but he has lingering doubts.

"What do you want, Yura?" Otabek looks at him with a soft, open expression:  his brows are relaxed; his eyes are warm; his mouth is turned up at the corners.

"This," he says, grabbing the front of Otabek's jacket and pulling him closer. He tips his head to the side, waiting for permission. Otabek closes the distance between them.

It's gentle and warm as the wind breaks around them. They part after a moment, Yuri leaning his forehead against Otabek's.

He's about to suggest calling JJ when he hears a wolf whistle and clapping. He jolts away from Otabek to glare at the intruder. He's not surprised to see JJ walking toward them.

When he’s close enough, JJ slings an arm around each of their shoulders.

“Now that that’s figured out,” he says, loudly enough that Yuri puts a hand on his cheek and forces his face toward Otabek, “let’s have some fun. Right?” 

Otabek reaches behind JJ and tugs on Yuri’s sleeve. He offers a hand when Yuri looks over JJ’s shoulder. Yuri takes it.

- 

Come Monday, Yuri may or may not have a hickey on his neck and a smile on his face. The people he passes by look mildly alarmed at this new presentation, but he ignores them.

When he opens his locker, he’s surprised, yet not, to find a note waiting for him.

 _My dearest Yuri_ , it starts in JJ’s familiar handwriting, _I feel so strongly that_

He crumples and throws it JJ’s head as he appears beside Yuri. JJ just grins and puts an arm around his shoulders.

And if his heartbeat picks up or his stomach lurches, that’s normal (but still dumb).


End file.
